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Who's "Hot" in Metaphysics?

For some refereeing work, one of the complimentary books I requested from OUP is the new Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics edited by Michael Loux (Notre Dame) and Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers). This is an impressive, very much state-of-the-art volume, with a detailed index that gives an idea whose work in metaphysics is most-discussed these days. The most-referenced figures? They are (those who are also contributors are marked with an *): David Armstrong (emeritus, University of Sydney); John Bigelow (Monash University); the late C.D. Broad; the late Roderick Chisholm; *Kit Fine (New York University); *Sally Haslanger (Massachussetts Institute of Technology); Mark Hinchliff (Reed College); *Jaegwon Kim (Brown University); the late David Lewis (the most referenced philosopher, appropriately enough, in the volume); E.J. Lowe (University of Durham); Ned Markosian (Western Washington University); Hugh Mellor (emeritus, Cambridge University); Trenton Merricks (University of Virginia); Alvin Plantinga (University of Notre Dame); the late A.N. Prior; Hilary Putnam (emeritus, Harvard University); the late W.V.O. Quine; *Michael Rea (University of Notre Dame); the late Bertrand Russell; *Ted Sider (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) (close to Lewis in terms of discussion in the volume); Lawrence Sklar (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor); *Michael Tooley (University of Colorado, Boulder); *Peter van Inwagen (University of Notre Dame); *Timothy Williamson (Oxford University); *Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers University, New Brunswick).

It is gratifying to note that the institutional affiliation of the philosophers having the most impact on discussions in contemporary metaphysics, as reflected in the Oxford Handbook, maps rather well on to the ranking of programs in metaphysics in the last PGR (some of the discrepancies have to do partly with how the category is defined, and partly with faculty moves since).